


and ask no leave of thee

by bookhobbit



Series: The Magic Circle [8]
Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-09 06:31:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4337555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookhobbit/pseuds/bookhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sir Walter Pole attempts to win his wife back to him, and is beset by peculiar circumstances.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and ask no leave of thee

**Author's Note:**

> Once again I can only blame Moll. :p This is the first (though chronologically fairly late) bit of a fanfic universe I'm somehow building in my head called the Magic Circle 'verse. It's extremely shippy but wouldn't know from this. More importantly though it is an eventual fluffy domestic postcanon AU. Anyway, Moll wrote some headcanons for it, including this one, and I had to fic it.

June 1820

 

Sir Walter Pole had made up his mind to woo his wife back to him.

The circumstances were these. Emma had stayed at Starecross after her illness (which had come to be revealed as some sort of enchantment; Sir Walter, who did not like magic, had not followed the details too closely). Sir Walter had felt this appropriate if she wished it, for she needed time to recover, and he thought the quiet of the countryside would be just the thing.

Starecross had gone from a madhouse to a school in late 1817 but, Emma had written, she intended to stay and help its master develop a programme of magic which would be fairly-used and fairly-taught. He was, she said, eager for her assistance with this, since she had been cruelly used by magic and would wish to prevent incidents of her sort happening again.

This, too, Sir Walter thought well of. If magic was to return to England its teaching had best be done honestly. And Emma certainly seemed to be in a position to facilitate this.

The trouble was that Emma had remained at Starecross now for two and a half years, writing only occasionally and Sir Walter wished her to return. But when word from her had finally arrived this month, it had not been a declaration of her love, but a request that she grant him a divorce.

It had been quite the most astonishing thing he had seen in his life. It was not only that he did not know what had turned him against her. He allowed that enmity might come between a husband and a wife with one party unawares. But to request a divorce! Who had ever heard of such a thing? They had no grounds for it, and in any case it would be so difficult and expensive to obtain that Sir Walter could not think of how to go about it. To say nothing of the scandal for both of them, and especially to Emma!

He wrote this to her, pleading with her to see sense. She only replied that she did not care for her reputation, was sure his would survive if it was clear he held no guilt in that matter, and that if money was his objection then he should use her fortune in any case. He was so stung by this easy declaration of his parsimony and cowardice that he did not write again for several days.

Then he decided not to write at all, but to go see her. He knew the way to Starecross. Sir Walter enjoyed the occasional novel, and the general thrust of their plots assured him that Emma only needed time to recover from her illness. Now that she was - clearly - much more energetic and better-off, surely all he need do was present himself and remind her of why they were married in the first place. This, he felt sure, would ensure their joyous reunion.

With this happy thought in mind he set out on a fine Saturday in June for a journey of 200 miles that would carry him to his beloved. It was very literary, and the trip into Yorkshire was quite comfortable. He allowed himself to hope. He imagined what he might say to Emma; what she might say to him; the words of love that might be exchanged when they found themselves in each other's presence again. He imagined expressing his greatest regret for any pain he had caused her during her illness, and she telling him that she knew he had done his best.

Once he arrived in Yorkshire, however, it all began to take a turn for the uncanny.

For starters, a lady with dark hair and weary eyes in the lane he was riding on stood in front of his carriage. He thought he knew her face. He ordered the coachmen to stop and leaned his head out to speak to her.

"Are you in need of some assistance, madam?" he asked.

"It is not I who needs it, but you," said the lady. "I have come to give you a piece of advice, Sir Walter Pole. For your own happiness and that of your wife's, I beseech you to leave Yorkshire. Do not go through with your mission, sir! The lady will thank you for leaving her be!"

Sir Walter gaped at the lady. That she should have known his private matters was surprizing enough; that she should presume to lecture him on how to behave towards his wife was the very height of rudeness.

"Madam," he said with dignity, "I must ask you to let me govern my own affairs."

The lady shook her head. She really did look dreadfully familiar; it was beginning to vex Sir Walter that he could not place her.

"I tell you again," she said, "For your continued happiness, leave Yorkshire."

"I thank you kindly for your advice," said Sir Walter, and withdrew his head back inside the carriage. He tapped for the driver to continue.

It was not until quite half an hour later that he realized the lady had been Arabella Strange.

This incident was certainly unsettling, particularly given that Mrs Strange had once been his wife's especial friend - one of her very few friends, in fact - during her illness. However, he considered that he did not know whether she had Emma had seen each other recently, so there was no way of knowing where she had got her information. Besides which, from his novel-reading he had the subconscious remembrance of many eerie incidents which happened to keep two lovers apart, but which in the end turned out to be nothing important. With this fact in mind, he bore resolutely on to Starecross Hall.

His horse and carriage were received politely enough through the gates, and his driver was seen to the stable. When he requested entrance to the hall, he was shewn into a small sitting room, tastefully furnished, by a polite and well-dressed maidservant. It was all going quite as expected.

That was to say, until a small dark man opened the door of the sitting room and entered. He had the awkward and uncertain bearing of a shy man, but he was almost vibrating with determination and, Sir Walter would have guessed, nerves.

"I am Segundus, sir," said the man. "I am the headmaster of this school."

Sir Walter rose and made to shake the man's hand, but Segundus shook his head.

"The lady is not in residence, sir," he said.

Sir Walter opened his mouth in astonishment, lowering his hand. "Then where might she be?" he asked.

"She went for a short holiday to clear her mind. She said you might be coming and requested I see you on her behalf." Mr Segundus lifted his chin in a manner most defiant. "You must trust that I speak for her, sir."

"Speak for her!" said Sir Walter. "What is your relationship to her, that you should do so?"

"She is as dear to me as a sister," said Segundus, the positioning of his chin growing yet more defiant, "And she knows I would convey her wishes to the best of my ability. On this point, sir, I must ask you to leave!"

"Leave!" said Sir Walter, feeling that he was not contributing much to the conversation. "I cannot leave until I have seen Emma. I must tell her - "

"You must do no such thing. I am very sorry, sir, but she does not wish to see you. She feels that there will never be anything more than friendship between you two and requests that you leave her. She knows that you did what you could during her captivity, but sir, you did not listen to her! I know you were confused. These matters of magic and fairy-kidnappings and enchantment are often baffling even to those of us who study them. But you can hardly blame her ladyship for wishing to be rid of all memories associated with her captivity. I am sorry, sir, but I have the utmost sympathy for her position. I know it is not your fault, but I also feel quite strongly that she has the right to live her own life, after what has happened to her."

As Segundus spoke, he had been leading Sir Walter towards the door of the house, and Sir Walter had been far too taken aback to notice. But with the ending of this speech, he realized he was near to being pushed quite out of the house.

"Sir!" he said, resisting. "I must protest. I shall not go until I see my wife. You cannot force me - "

"He can, sir," said a voice to the left of Sir Walter. Sir Walter turned to see an older, dignified-looking gentleman holding a blunderbuss and looking thunderous.

"Really," said Sir Walter, approaching the man, "There is no need - "

The man shot. There was a stinging sensation in the region of Sir Walter's chest, but not, he thought, one that matched what being shot ought to have felt like. Sir Walter looked down at himself to find pieces of walnut shell crumbling into his jacket.

"That was only a warning," said the man. "Now I must ask you to leave. Your carriage is waiting."

Sir Walter decided that a graceful retreat would be best for the moment if Emma was in any case not here. He had no desire to wait to see her in the presence of small men who lectured him like schoolteachers and dignified gentlemen who shot him with walnuts.

He would set some local lad to tell him when Emma returned, and then he would come back for her.

It would seem, however, that the uncanny portion of the day was not yet done. He was riding along in perfect silence, considering his strategy, when there was a scuffling sound outside his carriage and a man flung himself in.

Sir Walter spluttered. "Who the devil are you?" he demanded, provoked, not unreasonably into rudeness.

But the man only smiled. He, too, looked strangely familiar, with his ragged thunder-black hair and clothes, his long nose and long sidewise smirk. But Sir Walter could not recall where he had seen him.

"I know what you are thinking," said the man. "You're thinking that if you come back later, when your wife is in, she will agree to see you, and then you'll convince her to come back with her. Perhaps you'll bring some men to be sure you are let in." The smile broadened. "But I tell you, sir, that I can see your future, and if you do that, it will not end happily for you. Your triumph will turn to ashes in your mouth, and you will find that what you wished for is not the same as what you want." The man nodded to him. "That is all, sir. I wish you a pleasant journey. Good luck with your next election." This last was delivered in a vaguely menacing tone which suggested it would be very easy to ensure Sir Walter did not have good luck in his next election.

Then the man was gone, leaving Sir Walter with no clear idea of how he had got out, or, if it came to that, how he had got in. Sir Walter had the headach and an uneasy feeling all the way back to London.

Even this was not the end of the matter. The day he returned, he had an extremely odd dream.

It began with perfect blackness and silence, and then two voices echoed across the formless expanse. He could not make out everything they were saying. This is what he heard:

" - hardly knew the lady, Jonathan - "

" - back to life! For my sake, then, and to make amends for - "

Suddenly the voices ceased and Sir Walter found himself in his office with the long-missing magicians Mr Strange and Mr Norrell. Mr Strange looked indignant; Mr Norrell looked uncomfortable. Both of them were clearing trying to convey some message to him, but as only one word out of twenty was audible, he could not have said what it was. He heard Mr Strange say "wife" and "not" and "peace" and Mr Norrell say "not working". They then turned and began to quarrel with each other, and he woke up.

The dream reocurred, with small variations on how it began and what the magicians were apparently saying but always ending with a quarrel between the two magicians, for two days. Sir Walter never learned what they were trying to say to him.

However, on the fourth night, he had quite a different dream. He was in a starlit wood, sitting on a log, and the ghost of his former butler Stephen Black was beside him.

At least, Sir Walter supposed it must be his ghost, for Stephen Black had been missing for such a long time that he was presumed dead. He was wearing, for some reason, a diadem, and finer clothes than Sir Walter had ever seen him in, though Stephen in life had always taken care of his person and looked his best.

"Stephen," Sir Walter said, "You are wearing a crown."

"So I am, sir."

"The afterlife has been kind to you, then?"

Stephen looked surprized, and then laughed as Sir Walter had rarely heard him since Sir Walter's marriage. It reminded him of older days.

"You might say that," said Stephen. He said to himself, "Indeed, I should have known that you would draw that conclusion." And then louder to Sir Walter, "Yes, it has been, in fact. Far kinder in some ways than the other had."

"So you are well?"

"I am, sir. And I hope you are the same."

"I'm sorry to say I am not," said Sir Walter. "Although I expect you know, being a ghost. Have you come to deliver portents of doom to me?"

Stephen smiled. "No, sir," he said. "I come to give you advice."

"On my wife? It seems that everyone is giving me advice on my wife of late."

Stephen nodded and then grew serious. "Sir," he said, "We have been through much together. I well remember the days when you were poor and had no-one but me. And I remember the kindness you have always treated me with." He leaned forward. "For the sake of the love I bear both you and your wife, I would beg you to let her go! She will not be happy with you, and you will not be happy pursuing her." He clasped Sir Walter's hands. "And I would see you both happy, after you have suffered so much."

"But I love her," said Sir Walter.

"I know, sir."

"You do not think she could be happy with me?" asked Sir Walter.

"She has changed since your marriage, sir. And who could wonder at it."

"All I have ever wanted was her happiness," said Sir Walter. "All this time."

"I know," said Stephen.

There was silence. Then Sir Walter sighed. "Thank you, Stephen," he said. "I do not know what to do. But seeing you again has made me feel easier about making a decision."

Stephen nodded. "I wish you happiness," he said.

"And I you." Sir Walter clasped Stephen's hand, and then the wood faded.

Sir Walter woke up with tears on his cheeks.

He got up, looked at Emma's latest letter, and sighed in much the same way as he had in the dream. Then he bent to write. He was still not sure if a divorce was possible, but if it was a separation she wished, he would grant it to her.

And, perhaps, he thought, he could still be happy. He had been wifeless for forty years of his life, and he had been quite busy and hardly thought of the lack, really. It would be difficult, but perhaps he would make it through this too.

Sir Walter went to work with more hope than he had expected. And somewhere, the Nameless King looked into a mirror that led out to Sir Walter's house, and smiled at what he saw.

 

 


End file.
